being

His intro:

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), was a 20th-century Academy Award and Grammy Award-winning English songwriter, singer, instrumentalist, graphic artist, author and political activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founders of The Beatles. Lennon and Paul McCartney formed a critically acclaimed and commercially successful partnership writing songs for The Beatles and other artists. Lennon, with his cynical edge and knack for introspection, and McCartney, with his storytelling optimism and gift for melody, complemented one another uniquely. In his solo career, Lennon wrote and recorded songs such as "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance".

Lennon revealed his rebellious nature and irreverent wit on television, in films such as A Hard Day's Night (1964), in books such as In His Own Write, and in press conferences and interviews. He channeled his fame and penchant for controversy into his work as a peace activist, artist, and author.

He had two sons, Julian, with his first wife Cynthia, and Sean, with his second wife, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. Lennon was murdered by a deranged fan Mark David Chapman in New York City on 8 December 1980 after he and Ono returned home from a recording session.

In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon into eighth place. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Lennon number 38 on their list of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time"
and ranked The Beatles at number 1.

Why he was popular?

Lennon had a varied recording career. Whilst still a Beatle, Lennon (along with Ono) recorded three albums of experimental music, Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions, and Wedding Album. His first 'solo' album of popular music was Live Peace in Toronto 1969, recorded prior to the breakup of The Beatles, at the Rock 'n' Roll Festival in Toronto with The Plastic Ono Band. He also recorded three solo singles: the anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance", the heroin withdrawal report "Cold Turkey", and "Instant Karma!". Following The Beatles' split in 1970 Lennon released the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album. The song "God" lists people and things Lennon no longer believed in - ending with "Beatles". The album also included "Working Class Hero" which was banned from the airwaves for its use of the word "fucking".

The album Imagine followed in 1971, and its title song soon became an anthem for anti-religion and anti-war movements. The song's video was filmed during Lennon's "white period" (white clothes, white piano, white room, and the like). He wrote "How Do You Sleep?" as an attack against McCartney, with George Harrison on slide guitar, but later claimed that it was about himself.

Some Time in New York City (1972) was loud, raucous, and explicitly political, with songs about prison riots, racial and sexual relations, the British role in Northern Ireland, and his own problems in obtaining a United States Green Card. Lennon had been interested in left-wing politics since the late 1960s, and was said to have given donations to the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party.

In 1972 Lennon released "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", which drew parallels between exploitation of women and discrimination against blacks. Radio stations refused to broadcast the song and it was banned nearly everywhere, though he managed to play it to television viewers during his second appearance on The Dick Cavett Show.

Things he did that shot him to fame:

On 4 March 1966, Lennon was interviewed for the London Evening Standard by his friend Maureen Cleave and made an off-the-cuff remark regarding Christianity.

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.... I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

The article was printed and nothing came of it — until five months later, when an American teen magazine called Datebook reprinted part of the quote on its front cover.

A firestorm of protest erupted across the American Bible Belt in the South and Midwest, as conservative groups staged public burnings of Beatles records and memorabilia. (The Beatles at first viewed this in a wry way, saying, "They've got to buy them first before they burn 'em.") Many radio stations banned Beatles music, and some concert venues cancelled performances.

A 1967 portrait of Lennon by Richard Avedon.

On 11 August 1966, The Beatles held a press conference in Chicago, in order to address the growing controversy.[citation needed]

Lennon: I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have got away with it, but I just happened to be talking to a journalist friend, and I used the words "Beatles" as a remote thing, not as what I think — as Beatles, as those other Beatles, like other people see us. I just said "they" are having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus. But I said it in that way, which is the wrong way.

Reporter: Some teenagers have repeated your statements — "I like The Beatles more than Jesus Christ." What do you think about that?

Lennon: Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact, and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

Reporter: But are you prepared to apologise?

Lennon: I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do, but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.

The Vatican accepted his apology, but the Southern Baptist Convention (the predominant religion in the U.S. Bible Belt) did not.
Lennon wrote later, "I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days; if I hadn't said that The Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus' and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus."

The crazy stuff he done

On 14 March, as Lennon and Ono were being driven to Mimi's house, in Poole, Dorset, they asked if it was possible to get "married at sea". On 20 March 1969, they were married in Gibraltar, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam in a "Bed-In" for peace. Behind their bed were posters that displayed the words "Hair Peace. Bed Peace." They held another "Bed-In", in Montreal, at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance", which became an anthem for the peace movement. They were mainly patronised as a couple of eccentrics by the media, yet they did a great deal for the peace movement, as well as for feminism and racial harmony. Lennon and Ono often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism" introduced during a Vienna press conference. Shortly after, Lennon changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon wrote "The Ballad of John and Yoko" about his marriage and the subsequent press coverage it generated.

The failed Get Back/Let It Be recording/filming sessions did nothing to improve relations within the band. After both Lennon and Ono were injured in the summer of 1969 in a car accident in Scotland, Lennon arranged for Ono to be constantly with him in the studio (including having a full-sized bed rolled in) as he worked on The Beatles' last album, Abbey Road. While the group managed to hang together to produce one last acclaimed musical work, soon thereafter business issues related to Apple Corps came between them.

Why he is a genius?

Lennon started writing and drawing early in life, with encouragement from his Uncle George (Mimi's husband). He often drew caricatures of his school teachers; when he attended art school he penned love poems to Cynthia Lennon on scraps of paper, once writing, "Our first Christmas, I love you, yes, yes, yes."

Lennon even created his own comic strip, which he called "The Daily Howl". This contained drawings, frequently of crippled people, and satirical writings, often with a play on words. For example, in one page, Lennon wrote a weather report saying that "Tomorrow will be Muggy, followed by Tuggy, Wuggy and Thuggy."

When Liverpool's Mersey Beat magazine was founded, Lennon was often asked to contribute. His first piece was about the origins of The Beatles and contained the line, "A man appeared on a flaming pie, and said you are Beatles with an 'A'."

Books written by Lennon, or with contributions. Some were published posthumously. The first three works here are generally considered to be unique examples of literary nonsense.

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